Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Immature Uncle Mike Finds The Simple Things Funny

Mike Fontanelli, being a cartoonist, is of course quite immature.He collects all kinds of kiddie toys and silly cartoon books and old tv shows. Shame.He is so proud of his wrong color Hanna Barbera toys - as he should be.

Uncle Mike invited Uncle Eddie and his new baby and some other immature buddies over to his cartoon museum one night and proceeded to amuse us with his childish antics.He served us baby food.Kali fell instantly in love with Eddie Junior.Look at this innocent tyke. Don't you just want to cuddle him? Not Mike.

Mike sees a newborn and starts right in on putting it in funny positions to amuse his friends."Here's Eddie driving to work every day! CHNEEE HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE!""This is Kali's POV of Uncle Eddie" guffaws Mike.This went on all night.Well, soon I couldn't resist any longer and I offered Mike my own baby to play with.

This is what he came up with.Mike giggled non-stop for hours as he put his insatiable creativity to work.

Uncle Mike may be immature, but he's not so childish as to imagine that The Lord Of The Rings would make a good animated movie.

Every teenager who likes cartoons imagines that someday he will produce The Lord Of The Rings as a cartoon feature to show everyone else how magnificent his vision is.

If he is an artist, he is usually cured of this crazy notion the day he has to inbetween his first scene of any cartoon. When he finds out how much work it is to make just one character come alive, let alone the hordes of thousands required to do a single scene from a Tolkien story, he is shaken quickly from his childish fantasies.

This is nothing against Bakshi (who rotoscoped his film), I was just making fun of teenagers who think they know what animation is capable of, having never done it themselves.

I had some crazy ideas of what I thought I wanted to animate when I was a kid, but have abandoned them after learning how animation works.

Grownup animators are still immature, but hard knocks teach them what makes sense to animate...and what is fun to animate.

John K:"Grownup animators are still immature, but hard knocks teach them what makes sense to animate...and what is fun to animate."

Like oversize boobies, hairy guys running with their nutsacks in a speedo, and hot cute women in catfights! Funny and important stuff. Animators do collect a lot of toys and they play with them. It keeps the imaginations humming. My secret shame is toys and puppets are not enough ... I make my cats, ALL OF THEM, dance, sing, act, tell jokes, swing around (with their approval, mind you - NEVER force a poor animal to do something they don't want do or think is fun) while getting a good idea how an anthropomorphic cat would actually pose, move, etcetera. I blame Get Fuzzy for inspiring me this foolishness, but my cats love it and get on my case if I don't feel like "putting on a show" each morning for My Fair Lady.

Those are hilarious... obviously. But what made me crack up the most was Eddie's intense gaze from over Mike's shoulder. I'm stealing that idea the next time anyone I'm with is having their picture made!

Rankin Bass subcontracted the beast to the nips who would found studio ghibli and make thundercats...I really like how they do Bilbo in the Hobbit though...a really ugly charming and poorly translated pillow thing..?

I had a Vincent Van Gopher toy exactly like that as a child. Haven't seen one in 40 years. I used to swing him around by hooking my finger underneath his teeth, then windmilling my arm like Pete Townshend. Try it!

>Every teenager who likes cartoons imagines that someday he will produce The Lord Of The Rings as a cartoon feature to show everyone else how magnificent his vision is.

ahahahahaha!!!!

oh man!!!! That's such a coincidence!!

Today during religion class, thumbing through The Bible, I imagined myself directing an epic animated adaption of The Book of Revelations (which is all metaphors) inspired by the last demon sketch in Fantasia. Of course, my vision incluided using cels instead of computers. I was already planning my Oscar speech, but then I thought to myself "John would HATE that"

I remember of having seen that Quick Draw McGraw toy with the wrong colors on a vignette from the classic Boomerang (http://www.cartoonnetwork.com/boomerang) here in Brazil - quite before of the modifications occured on the programming from this channel (here in Brazil and on the Latin America), which ended updating the channel's programming -, because there in the States, Boomerang remains with its programming aimed to the classic cartoons (besides of the inclusion of the cartoons from the 90s on it). This was what I've had to report here. Ciao!

I had that very same "mole" stuffed animal when I was growing up. Its sad to see him put through such traumatic antics with other stuffed animals and objects. He was in Deputy Dawg and I suppose we need that Deputy back!